Men's Guide to Women

How long has man been trying to figure out woman? Clearly since Adam. No, not Adam Sandler, not Adam Ant, not Adam Rich (for you old Eight is Enough fans) or even Wealth of Nations author, Adam Smith. No, we have to go all the way back to the original overnight sin-sation, Adam of the famous duo Adam & Eve.

After all this time, 2000 years give or take, you would think that we would have covered every possible angle on dating, but apparently not. Amazon has 157,960 books on dating women. If you figure that any dating book worth its salt is at least 100 pages long there would be at least 1,579,600 pages in print on the subject right now. If you factored in books that are out of print, cuneiform tablets, papyrus leaves, rice paper scrolls, leather Post-Its from the middle ages and the only erotic book in the Bible, Song of Solomon surely we have covered it all.

Google alone has 36,200,000 websites indexed to the search term "dating women." Of course we all know that 29,000,000 of those sites are related to porn. I would guess that 4,000,000 of these sites are related to finding you a non English speaking bride, as if there were not enough barriers to communication with women speaking the same language that we needed to throw a different language into the mix. With all of the ads there must be 2,000,000 dating sites all wanting your picture and a paragraph and another 1,000,000 related to various male enhancements, presumably leaving a couple of hundred thousand sites giving you advice on the subject.

If you were to walk through the personal development/relationship section of your friendly neighborhood book store and pick out a few good choices with your Vinte Vanilla Double Mocha Caffeine Back Flip Drip Latte and flop down in an overstuffed brown leather chair for a quick review you could scare the stuffing out of yourself.

These books hand out advice like call her, but not too much though men who don’t call are a**holes. Don't sound too needy, sound confident. Women don't like men that are too confident because they seem arrogant. Women like men who will talk to them and tell them how they feel, but she does not want to hear you talk about yourself, she wants you to focus on her.

Arrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

It is enough to make you want to throw your $7 coffee in the air and run from the book store screaming like a three year old.

You just want a date. A good date with a nice normal woman without psychotic or suicidal tendencies. You would like amazing beauty, extreme low maintenance and an amazing body, but hey, dating a normal woman is a good first step.

I am with you, man.

I have sifted through piles, swam through seas of paper and delved into books I would not want any self respecting male to have to endure in the quest for the most concise, accurate, dating tips ever put to paper and I found them without ever getting out of my chair.

As with any gems of wisdom there will be a segment of you out there that will not like what you are going to hear, and I am sure I will hear from some of you if history is an accurate predictor.

I say, "Tough toenails." Like them, love them or hate them here they are.

Dating rule number one.  The first thing you need to know about dating is that dating is all about sales. I told you some of you would hate it. Just keep reading, you have come this far.

For every 100 women in this country in their twenties there are 120 men. For the record, after men spend a lifetime killing each other the odds turn decidedly in our favor by age 65 when there are only 33 men for every 100 women. Now you know why all the old single guys are smiling and the reason there are 52,000,000 Viagra related websites on Google, but I digress.

Dating is at its simplest a supply and demand problem. If you have ever had on a pair of beer goggles on you know exactly what I mean. If you do not know what beer goggles are, hit our definition page here.

Most women want a man at some point. Fortunately for you, you meet the minimum criteria. She wants the best man she can get for what she has to offer. Her offer being her looks, personality, dreams, intelligence, achievements, career, money, and the quality of the character she has developed as she has walked around on the planet for 20+ years.

You with me so far? This takes us to dating rule number 2. You are the product you have to sell to be successful.

This looks like a perfectly good place for an analogy.

You do not want to go out and give everything you have to buy a car that breaks down, smokes, drinks oil, or needs an illegal octane boost to get going in the morning and refuses to work after the first year, do you?

Neither does she. She only has one "her" and she wants to get the best deal she can for it. She may not be able to afford the Lexus (amazing looks, real star athlete, incredibly smart, winning smile, great hair, muscular, excellent personality, always helping others, humble with a quiet confidence and billions in the bank) but she does not want a guy that is the equivalent of a 1985 Yugo either.

Are you a Lexus or a Yugo? Are you somewhere in between? As with cars, not everyone wants the Lexus. Some want a VW Bug, some want a Jeep and I know lots of guys that would like a Hummer. Whatever you are or want to be, you have to realize there is only one person in the world that is ultimately responsible for building and selling that which is you and that person is in the mirror.

That is it. At its simplest level that is all there is to it with the exception of one small wrinkle.

With the car buying analogy when you find the car that is perfect for you, you never have to consider whether or not the car thinks you are perfect for it. That one little nuance is what has generated the billions of pages of paper on the subject over the centuries.

To hammer that last point home lets go down Old Analogy Road one more time. Let's say Sheza Oogly is out there trying to find her perfect man/car and has settled on you, a low mileage cherry ride with nice paint and seating for four when she is ready for kids. You however do not want to be garaged with Sheza Ugly as she is a scratch and dent special that looks like she lost a fight with a train. She still runs though, dripping a lot of fluids, and shows signs of electrical issues so you never know for sure if her lights are on. No Match.

Just time for one final lap on this one.

1. Dating is sales. Heck, life is sales. You may hate sales, salesmen and the very thought of having to sell anything but sorry, life sucks that way sometimes, if you are dating you are in sales. You are selling yourself as part of the dating process just like you sold yourself to get your job or your spot on the high school football team. You may have had to sell yourself to get first chair in the band or to get a spot on the school chess team. You sell yourself to the people calling you friend. You have to sell yourself as part of this process. Find your showroom. Is it work, the neighborhood, church, the night club, the bar, the company picnic, where is it? Your job is to put your product in the best possible position to get the sale you want. Is there a little body damage? Get it fixed or sell the benefits of the comfy interior. Not much hair up top, sell the low maintenance exterior. Sell the best of what you’ve got.

2. You are the product. I cannot tell you anything more important to dating than that. If you do not put much work into your product, do not expect to get much in return. Your product is you, not you pretending to be a Lexus with a Yugo engine. Be the best you that you can be. Find what you enjoy in life, get your direction, find who you want to be and start shaping yourself to be the best man you know how to be.

As a bonus I will give you a third tip. This one is not tied directly to dating. It is a much bigger concept that will impact many different facets of your life but none more so than the relationships with the people you love.

Ready for the big bonus tip?

It is not about you.

That’s it. Think about it for a moment. By our very nature we see everything as it impacts us because we have two high definition cameras and stereo sound built into our head with twenty four hour a day access watching this drama called life unfold before us.

Just as an exercise, take yourself out of the starring role of the movie in your head. Put your wife, your son, your boss, your priest, your mother or whoever you want to fill that role and take a supporting role for yourself making their lives easier and making them feel good. If you truly give it a shot I would like you to let me know how that made you feel inside.

You should do this without any expectation of getting anything back for your efforts. Just be nice. You will get some people that will suck up any attention you pay them and never return the favor. Those are people that are still starring in their own movie. However, most people will feel the need to do something for you or at least raise their opinion of you because you have helped them feel better about themselves.

OK, one last bit.

I heard this rather crass quote not too long ago from a "true ladies man" that I thought was quite appropriate for this article if not a bit insulting to the women in the room.

He said "Learn to love the skin you are in and the ladies will come to want you in their skin, too."

One more thing, I have this question rolling around in my head that has been bugging me for years. Let me know if you have a compelling answer.

Did Adam, of Adam & Eve fame, have a belly button?